My Ice
by Tobu Ishi
Summary: Sesshoumaru claims to hate humans...but he has a secret reason for his anger toward them, one that not even Inuyasha knows...


*~*My Ice*~*  
  
An Inuyasha One-Shot by Tobu Ishi  
  
It grows harder to command Jaken to stay away. Even with that small, waterlogged mind of his, he suspects. He can smell something not right about these times when I tell him to go and leave me, when I disappear for hours at a time into these woods.  
  
He is a fool, but not for the reasons I hiss at him every day as I dig my claws coolly into his flesh. He does not know it, but the punishment is not for him.  
  
He is a fool, to give such terrified devotion...to something so corrupted.  
  
Indeed, I apply the word to myself. Only in my own thoughts, for who else should hear? Only those who would use it against me...or those, few though they are, who would argue against it, and leave me feeling emptier than ever when I return to the world that fears me as it should.  
  
There is a part of the world, a tiny corner, that does not fear me as it should. And I? I have not the heart to punish them for it...  
  
As I reach that corner today, I pause to open my senses to the trees around me, combing the air for sounds, scents, any sign of danger. None comes, and I sigh with relief and disappointment. I will not be discovered tonight.  
  
I take a step toward one tree, an enormous giant, possibly older than even my father's father. It is as big around as a farmer's wagon, and one side covered in climbing vines. As it always does, something within me coldly calls for me to destroy it and those within...but it is not as powerful as that blasted strong-weak part of me that pulls me to this place. I let out a low whistle, as I always do.  
  
There is a burst of excited confusion from within the top of the tree, and then two small shapes burst from behind the curtain of ivy and fling themselves from the branches in delighted leaps. They land running, and are beside me in seconds.  
  
"Chichiue! Chichiue!"  
  
The larger one clutches my pant leg, looking up at me with bright golden eyes fringed with beautiful long lashes. She is beautiful, that strong-weak part of me says, and I cannot squash the thought, no matter how much I hate it. This child is part of me...but I tear my gaze away, quickly, before my gaze travels to the pointed ears set atop her head and I am reminded...  
  
Reminded that my father's shame, my brother's folly, are my own.  
  
Their mother comes now, ducking through the curtain of vines from a room cut lower in the bole. She dries her hands on a cloth as she walks, and although she does not run like the small ones, her face is bright. I am tied to the warmth in her wide black eyes, and it is a bond I hate as deeply as I love as she walks to me and picks up our younger child, balancing him on her hip.  
  
This is why I freeze myself so deeply, outside this grove. This is why I am closed, and silent, and solitary as a clam, but for my one noddle-brained servant. This is the self-hate that has driven me to slay so many humans, always hoping that their blood on my hands will cleanse me of my need for this living heaven-hell, or at least end her caring for me...and this is the cage that always keeps me from telling her what I have done, when I return to the tree and my...family.  
  
I am not my brother, impetuous and foolhardy. I cannot abandon myself to love and forget the dishonor I rain upon my ancestors every moment I spend in the arms of something so inferior to us. I am cursed, like my father before me; we were both trapped by the one aspect in which humans outdo demons.  
  
The forgiving nature and sheer greatness of their hearts.  
  
This girl, now a woman, yet not yet old... Years before my brother was freed from his fifty years' trap, she found me at the base of this tree, torn half to pieces by an encounter with that rare and deadly thing; a demon stronger than I. She asked no questions, and did not flee when I bared my fangs at her and hissed...oh, what a pitiful thing I must have been, half-dead and still trying to intimidate. I cringe at the memory, but she only smiled, and knelt beside me, pushing my bloody hair out of my eyes to look at my face. Then she stood, and left me.  
  
If she had only been intercepted on her way...but she returned, with bandages and salve stolen from the home of her aunt, the village healer to whom she was apprenticed, and bound my wounds, talking and singing softly all the while. Her voice was soothing, even to one in such pain as I, and I found myself falling asleep, my head on her knees as she carefully stitched a wound in my side...  
  
When I awoke, the first thing I saw was her back to me as she sat beside a small campfire, 'cooking' a meal. Why humans insist on ruining perfectly good flesh, I will never comprehend. Even the foul scent of burning meat was worth something to my empty stomach, however, and I sat up. She turned, a smile on her face that set off a peculiar and most unwelcome explosion of shivers in the base of my stomach, and went to the edge of the clearing. When she returned, she bore a large piece of meat...uncooked.  
  
She says now, smiling, that her mother always said the way to a man's heart is his stomach. Another inane human expression...and yet, whether for meat or healing or that smile that kept up all day, something inside me cleaved itself to her in that quiet clearing, and I have spent the years since desperately trying to rip it free, as it only holds ever closer, and laughs at my foolishness.  
  
And so I care for her, and love her...and hate myself and my father, for passing his madness on to me. I have gone so far, at times, as to hide and protect her from those who would disown and destroy her for her love.  
  
While she was pregnant with the little female, she stayed at a monastery far from her village. I brought her there when her mother threw her out of their house, screaming shrilly. I watched from a tree, silent, as she sat sprawled on the ground, her arms wrapped protectively around her still-flat stomach as her mother stood over her, calling her names I had never heard issue from a human mouth to anyone but myself. When she struck her, my claws dug deep furrows in the bark of the tree, but I held back. I kept myself under control until the filthy woman disappeared back into her hovel, leaving her flesh and blood weeping in the yard among the chickens, and then I dropped from my vantage point and took her into my arms and away from there.  
  
The monastery was sworn to take in anyone in need, and they treated her well until she gave birth. When they saw what she had mothered, they trampled upon their oaths. They tried to kill the child...and her mother. Once again my chains dragged me in to take them away, and this time I brought them back to the clearing where I had been found and unknowingly captured, so long and so short a time ago. I left them there, and I returned to teach the monastery what it means to harm a demon's own, even a half-breed whelp and her human mother.  
  
I left no stone standing atop another. Then I returned to the tree.  
  
It was a pattern I have followed since, though for different reasoning. I made a home for them in the tree, and left them there, safely hidden from a world that hates them as much as I do, and has no love, however unwillingly harbored, to temper that hate. Then I went out, and spent my hate in cold killing, striking down human after human as I tried to sever my bonds with blood. But the more hate I spent on others, the less I had left to tether my love. We had another child, a son, a year and a half later, and my chains grew heavier. And then, not long after...  
  
My brother was freed.  
  
He was the only member of my family left. The only remaining example of the bad blood that did this to me! And when I next saw him, he was accompanied by a girl: a human girl, with raven-black hair and a sharp temper. Once again, my brother had fallen to the curse that rides our family tree.  
  
We disgrace our species, both of us. He, willingly; I, fighting every step of the way. For him it is understandable, though disgusting; he is half human, after all. For me, it is unforgivable, and yet I return to it whenever I can, powerless against it.  
  
I hate humans. But I love my family.  
  
So I freeze that love in my ice, hiding my shame from the world, and I go...home.  
  
"Chichiue, mite ne!" My daughter, bright-faced and happy, holds up a red flower, and I smile in spite of myself.  
  
"Aa, kirei ne," I murmur, and pick her up. She grows heavier, as children do, but I am a demon, and I am strong in body at least. "Demo, Mayumi-chan no hou ga kirei to omoimasu." Mayumi, 'straight bow': a human name, given by her mother. She giggles, and my ice melts for the time being. My shame remains, but I have tired long ago of fighting my cage. I hate my weakness, but remain a kicked yet devoted dog, for I have no other 'I' to be.  
  
Her mother comes to my side, rests her head on my shoulder, and I put my arm around her, the arm that in a few short hours will be tearing apart some random human in raging frustration at its captivity. But that I save for later, because I could not hurt these three if I tried. In truth, I have tried many times. It is impossible; my chains are more real than iron, because they are forged with love. My young son yawns in his mother's arms, his newly cut fangs like white pearls, and I feel the parental caring destroying my icy shield.  
  
Never mind. It will freeze again soon enough. And no one will know my secret, for I would kill any who might discover it...and the one who runs that risk most of all is my brother, for he of all people might begin to understand. Understanding is not what I want. Blood is what clears my mind, and that is what I seek, to stain my love red and hide it against the glare of the sunset. My secret, my shackles, my prison, my love...  
  
My ice....  
  
_______________________________  
  
So, there it is; my first finished Inuyasha fanfiction. A little unusual, but hey, the idea came to me in that wonderfully creative time between sleep and awake, so I can't really help it being odd. Though I love Inuyasha, it's none of it mine, and I make no money off it, more's the pity. -Tobu Ishi  
  
ps: After rereading this, years after it was first written, I cringe at my infantile use of Japanese. Still, I do want to keep the spoken lines in Japanese for old times sake; I read Inuyasha in that language and it's in that language that I enjoyed having them express themselves, hence my stumbling attempts to write them as doing so. The bit of Japanese spoken in 'My Ice', now revamped to sound less wanky and more like Sengoku Jidai dialect, translates thusly:  
  
"Chichiue!" = "Father!"  
  
"Mite ne!" = "Look!"  
  
"Aa, kirei ne" = "Oh, how pretty"  
  
"Demo, Mayumi-chan no hou ga kirei to omoimasu" = "But I daresay Mayumi-chan is prettier") 


End file.
